Magic Mushrooms Might Help Cancer Patients

A new study indicates that psilocybin—which you may know by the "street name" magic mushrooms—can help cancer patients alleviate anxiety and depression some six months after the initial dose. Illegal drugs: Totally good for you!

For the study, researchers dosed 12 cancer patients with psilocybin and "watched closely for six hours"; the subjects were instructed to "lie still with their eyes closed as they wore headphones and listened to soothing music." None of the patients showed signs of severe anxiety (Reuters uses the street name "bad trip"), and all showed "a trend of improvement in their symptoms of anxiety" as well as "a statistically significant improvement on one depression scale." Patients also experienced improvement in symptoms of "not understanding that the world is, you know, totally connected" and "not really getting P-Funk until now."

The study is a small one, but the researchers are hoping that the positive results will lead to more studies involving psilocybin (for example: What are the effects of psilocybin, on me, when I'm camping?). Until then, you'll have to call that guy you went to high school with.